NVIDIA Shield Review: At the Crossroads of PC and Mobile Gaming
by Brian Klug on July 31, 2013 12:14 AM ESTBattery Life
NVIDIA's Shield includes a 28.8Wh battery, which is large for a device its size but small compared to what you'd find in a 10-inch tablet for example. The good news is that it only has to power a 5-inch 720p display, which makes the choice of battery size quite nice. Since Shield is a fully functioning mobile device, we put it through our current battery life suite. Normally we'd start with our WiFi web browsing test, but given the target market for Shield I figured starting with our 3D rundown test made the most sense.
Here we have a loop of the Egypt HD benchmark, capped to 30 fps, running on all of the devices with their screens calibrated to 200 nits.
Shield manages just over 6 hours of use on a single charge, putting it up there with some of the best mobile devices we've put through this test. Being able to support 6 hours of locally rendered gaming without plugging in is pretty decent I'd say.
Video decode is also quite important, especially when you consider the use case where Shield acts as a remote display and controller for games rendered on your PC. In that case, the GPU is mostly powered down and only the video decode block is used to display what's being rendered on your PC. Our video playback test might be a good simulation of this use case. Our test remains unchanged from previous tablet reviews. Here I'm playing a 4Mbps H.264 High Profile 720p rip I made of the Harry Potter 8 Blu-ray. The full movie plays through and is looped until the battery dies. Once again, the displays are calibrated to 200 nits:
Tegra 4's video decode engine combined with a tiny 720p display and a 28.8Wh battery results in awesome battery life here - almost 19 hours on a single charge. If you can deal with the small screen, Shield might make for a good companion on long haul international flights just for video playback.
Finally we've got our standard web browsing battery life test:
We regularly load web pages at a fixed interval until the battery dies (all displays are calibrated to 200 nits as always). The differences between this test and our previous one boil down to the amount of network activity and CPU load.
On the network side, we've done a lot more to prevent aggressive browser caching of our web pages. Some caching is important otherwise you end up with a baseband/WiFi test, but it's clear what we had previously wasn't working. Brian made sure that despite the increased network load, the baseband/WiFi still have the opportunity to enter their idle states during the course of the benchmark.
We also increased CPU workload along two vectors: we decreased pause time between web page loads and we shifted to full desktop web pages, some of which are very js heavy. The end result is a CPU usage profile that mimics constant, heavy usage beyond just web browsing. Everything you do on your device ends up causing CPU usage peaks - opening applications, navigating around the OS and of course using apps themselves. Our 5th generation web browsing battery life test should map well to more types of mobile usage, not just idle content consumption of data from web pages.
Once again, excellent battery life from Shield.
NVIDIA ships Shield with a 10W (2.1A) power adapter, capable of completely charging Shield in 5.45 hours:
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darkich - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
..-there is hundreds of thousands of them.
- there are many full pc game ports already
- as far as shooters(genre with the greatest benefit of analog controls) are concerned, the iOS/Gplay library is VASTY superior, with at least ten super cheap titles that are at the same time better than ANY shooter on the DS/Vita.
Get out of that reality distorted prism and open your eyes already, please.
nikon133 - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
So... do you get heavy hitters on Shield (and in general for Android/iOS), games like:Rayman Origins
LittleBigPlanet
Mortal Combat
Metal Gear Solid HD collection
Uncharted
Dead or Alive 5
Street Fighter X Tekken
NFS: Most Wanted
Wipeout 2048
Ninja Gaiden
Jak and Daxter Collection
I have noticed some AAA titles in Android Market Place / Apple AppStore, but many of them seem to be dumbed down versions of console/PC counterparts, sometimes not much more than same name. On Vita, most above mentioned games are very close to originals from big consoles.
Yes they are much more expensive, but there really is reason for that. I do have Android tablet and iPhone, and had iPad for a while as well... but no, I failed to find many - if any - games of same overall quality you can get on PSP, let alone Vita.
darkich - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
Unbelievable short sightness..The uncharted and (ridiculously overrated) fighter games ate pretty much only titles I give to you, in that list.
And you missed the Assasin's creed title, while at it.
iOS/Android?
The crazy thing is, those libraries are so superior there really cannot be a comparison even.
There are HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF GAMES ON MOBILE, more titles being released in a day than what comes out in a month on Vita.
Picking up individual ("casual") titles that have amazed millions of players would take ages, but alright, I'll just try to pick up some of the "highest production quality" ones.
I dare you to find Vita counterparts to.these:
- Infinity blade
- Galaxy on fire
- Max Payne
-GTA
-Deus Ex: The Fall
- Order and Chaos
- The Bard's Tale
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old.Republic
- Bastion
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown
- Six Guns
- Modern Combat (4)
- N.O.V.A. (3)
- Real Racing (3)
- The Dark Knight Rises
- Sentinel III
- Shadowgun: Dead Zone
- Battle Bears
- Blitz Brigade
- Sky Gamblers(personal favorite)
- NBA 2k 13
- Chaos Rings
..
And I could go on, and on.
I hope you realize you've been beaten in your own game now.
Overall, iOS and Android game libraries are simply beyond comparison superior, offering hundred times more quantity, at a bargain price.
The reason why it seems the Nintendo and Vita have more quality is because the libraries are tiny and don't get flooded and burried up with thousands upon thousands of casual titles
darkich - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
..oh, and last and the most important..the FUTURE TRENDS.Android and iOS gaming will only grow-in fact, it is yet to enter the real revolution, with major studios tasting serious profits on the freemium model and taking mobile seriously (EA, for example, will release frostbite games on Android and iOS next year), and mobile GPU's far outperforming the PS3 console in a less than a year.
Otoh, Vita and Nintendo DS will simply fade into complete irrelevance.
nikon133 - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
Uncharted and fighting games only..?I will respectfully disagree. MGS Collection, Ninja Gaiden, Jak and Daxter are all premium titles. As well as LittleBigPlanet, one of most original franchises in recent years.
I didn't compile list of best games, I just listed bunch of games I recall that were well reviewed. Beside Assassin Creed, I also missed
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time
MLB 13: The Show
Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
Muramasa Rebirth
Velocity Ultra
Dragon's Crown
Guacamelee!
Soul Sacrifice
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale
Persona 4 Golden
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward
Doruko
FIFA 13
FIFA 14
Final Fantasy X
Gravity Rush
Madden NFL 13
...
... and I could go on and on.
True, Vita and GB are missing variety of cheap casual titles, so if one's preference in gaming is tossing birds and piggies across the screen, then it is simple choice.
But for premium, PC/console-quality titles? No. Not yet, at least. Those are still too few for Android/iOS. And of those that do exist, many are riddled with poor control schemes or poor execution in general.
darkich - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Which games from my list have you played, and on what device?5150Joker - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
NVIDIA: Thanks for the review! The check is in the mail! :DSeriously, who in their right mind would buy this oversized piece of junk?
Jumangi - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Yea and the vast majority of them are that cheap for a reason.Jumangi - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Those 2 inches matter allot to people. The form factor matters allot to people(bulky controller with flip screen and a fan going vs a sleek tablet like the new Nexus 7) The Nexus gets great battery life too. The power means nothing if it can't be used and I doubt much their will ever be and real support for the thing.Its has no future.
Someguyperson - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
I'm really torn whether to get this, or the new Nexus 7. I feel that half my time using a portable device is reading online articles and the other half playing emulators, but I might be leaning towards this guy. $300 isn't cheap enough for an impulse buy though.